GOP hawks: This will not stand, Rand

The Republican Party’s hawks are finally saying it out in the open: This aggression will not stand, Rand.

After three years of watching the GOP’s non-interventionist wing gather strength, there are mounting signs that a more combative set of national security conservatives have reached their breaking point. Now, prominent conservative leaders in what used to be considered the Bush-Cheney mold are increasingly taking the offensive against their intra-party rivals.

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New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie publicly challenged libertarian Republicans Thursday to explain their skepticism about government surveillance to the families of 9/11 victims, declaring at a Republican Governors Association event: “I want them to come to New Jersey and sit across from the widows and the orphans and have that conversation.”

New York Rep. Peter King said this week that he will explore a 2016 presidential run to wrest control of the defense debate from small-government advocates such as Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Ted Cruz of Texas, and warned that an America-first candidate would stand little chance of defeating Hillary Clinton.

Perhaps the most dramatic provocation to Paul-aligned conservatives came earlier this month, when Republican national security activist Liz Cheney – the former vice president’s daughter – announced a primary challenge to Wyoming Sen. Mike Enzi, a low-key incumbent backed by Paul and a number of other Senate colleagues.

Republican hawks say these developments amount to something less than a coordinated counteroffensive. But no one disputes that they’re nearing a critical mass of impatience with what some call “Rand-ism” – resistance to foreign entanglements and deep, confrontational skepticism about the expansion of the federal defense apparatus, particularly in the areas of surveillance and drone warfare.

“I want a strong national defense and I don’t want Rand Paul to be the face of the Republican Party,” King said in an interview. “I’ve felt this way for a while [and] once it gets out there, people say, ‘God, this is wrong, we’re killing ourselves. This is not the Republican Party.’”

Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, who was a vocal and at times caustic critic of Rand Paul’s father, former Texas Rep. Ron Paul, during the 2012 primaries, called it a welcome development that “people are starting to push back.”

“There was a lot of talk, particularly during the Republican primary last year, of, ‘Well, we don’t want to alienate these voters,” Santorum said, recalling that he’d been criticized as “too bellicose” and “too warlike. “I can tell you, the Paulistas who were active on the state level in 2012 were not interested in the Republican Party as it now exists. They are interested in a very different kind of model.”

King acknowledged that public opinion has turned against some Bush-era security policies, such as the ongoing war in Afghanistan. But he suggested that it doesn’t take much to jolt voters from their sense of complacency.

“I see every time there’s a terror attack, or even a thwarted terror attack, people’s views change dramatically,” the Long Island lawmaker said, conceding: “They want out after 12 years in Afghanistan, and really after President Obama not explaining for the last five years why we’re there.”

For the emboldened phalanx of defense-minded conservatives, it remains to be seen how difficult a task they’ll have in turning the tide of the GOP’s national security conversation. Republican hawks say they are firmly confident that the party is, in its heart, more sympathetic to the George W. Bush agenda of expanding freedom and fighting terrorism, than to the Rand-style focus on limiting the government’s security powers that many congressional Republicans have recently embraced.

That’s certainly true of most national Republican elites. In some Republican donor and operative circles, there’s active talk of whether the GOP’s strong-on-defense wing may need new infrastructure and organizations to promote their priorities during primary season in 2014 and beyond.

Among those groups, optimistic Republicans argue that the GOP base cheers for tirades against drones and the NSA out of hostility toward the Obama administration, rather than the actual substance of those issues. They point out that the GOP-held House defeated an amendment this week offered by libertarian Rep. Justin Amash, which would have sharply curtailed the NSA’s domestic spying powers (though about two in five Republicans supported the measure.)

Amid the continuing Edward Snowden saga, there have been few Republican voices sympathetic to the NSA leaker outside the Paul family.